TLDR: Corey “Big Hoss” Harrison was born April 27, 1983, in Las Vegas and started working at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop at age nine.
He appeared on Pawn Stars from its 2009 premiere through Season 23, earned a 5 percent ownership stake in the shop by threatening to quit in Season 7, lost nearly 200 pounds via gastric lap band surgery in 2010, and left Las Vegas for Tulum, Mexico, in 2024.
He was not told about the show relaunching without him. He was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident in Tulum in January 2026 and was hospitalized for over a month with no health insurance and $130,000 in medical bills.
His bank account was down to $400 at its lowest point. His estimated net worth on paper is $4 million. Essentially none of it is liquid.
The most honest thing Corey Harrison ever said on television was when he explained why he left it. “At this stage of the game, we’re all playing a character on Pawn Stars. I can’t play another season of 41-year-old me pretending to be 23.”
Nobody argued with him. They just replaced him and forgot to tell him about it.
Growing Up in the Shop
Richard Corey Harrison was born on April 27, 1983, in Las Vegas, the eldest son of Rick Harrison and his first wife Kim. He is the grandson of Richard Benjamin Harrison, known to television audiences as The Old Man.
The family opened the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in 1989 when Corey was six. By nine he was polishing jewelry and sweeping the floor. By his mid-teens he was handling actual appraisals and purchases.
His childhood friend Austin Russell, later known as Chumlee, grew up around the shop alongside him. The friendship predated the show, predated the fame, and predated any of the money. It was the one relationship in the entire Pawn Stars universe that nobody had to manufacture for the cameras.
Corey eventually became the shop’s day-to-day manager, handling hiring, overseeing the showroom floor, running eBay sales, and making the majority of the shop’s direct purchases. He was doing the work of a chief operating officer. He had no equity in the business he was running.
The Season 7 Negotiation
Around Season 7 in 2012, Corey pushed back. He told his father and grandfather he wanted a 10 percent ownership stake in the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop or he was leaving to work somewhere else.
He had leverage: the show was a global hit, he was one of its four primary faces, and walking out would have created a production problem the network could not easily solve mid-franchise.
Rick and The Old Man negotiated him down. He got a raise and a 5 percent equity partnership, with a vague understanding that his stake could grow over time. He accepted it.
That 5 percent stake is the primary asset underpinning his estimated $4 million net worth. The Gold and Silver Pawn Shop is worth somewhere between $5 million and $10 million as a going concern.
Five percent of that is $250,000 to $500,000. On paper it sounds like real money. In practice, Corey cannot sell his minority stake without Rick’s consent, cannot borrow against it easily, and does not receive residual income from syndication reruns because under the corporate structure those payments flow to the shop entity, which Rick controls.
The equity is real. The liquidity is not.
Losing The Old Man
Richard Benjamin Harrison died on June 25, 2018, at age 77, surrounded by family. Corey had worked alongside his grandfather since childhood. The Old Man was the gruff patriarch, the voice of experience, the man whose approval Corey had sought for 35 years.
In October 2018, four months after his grandfather’s death, Corey’s son was born. He named the boy Richard Benjamin Harrison.
The Weight Loss
In 2010 a routine doctor’s visit ended with a prescription for preventive diabetes medication. Corey drove directly from the doctor’s office to a surgical center and scheduled a gastric lap band procedure.
He lost 50 pounds in the first six weeks and nearly 190 pounds total, stabilizing at roughly 210 pounds by 2014. His doctor had prescribed medication for pre-diabetes.
Corey’s response was to go get surgery the same day rather than wait to need the medication.
Leaving and What Came After
After Season 23 wrapped filming in 2024, Corey did not renew his contract. He left Las Vegas in the fall of 2024 and moved to Tulum, Mexico.
He told a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter in February 2025 what he was done with: “My dad will work ’til the day he collapses. That’s just not me.”
He said he had nothing to do with the pawn shop anymore and had no desire to play a televised version of himself at 41 that the audience was still expecting to be 23.
In July 2025 he launched The Corey Harrison Show, a podcast co-hosted with Jairus Cobb, a former Pawn Stars producer, recorded from his home in Tulum. The format was deliberately different from the Las Vegas brand: no pawn counter, no shop merchandise, no manufactured stakes.
Just Corey talking about health, personal growth, and life after a camera crew.
In late 2025, a reporter from the Las Vegas Review-Journal told him during a phone interview that Pawn Stars was relaunching with Rick and Chumlee as the confirmed co-stars for a 2027 air date. Corey’s response was: “That’s news to me. Nobody’s told me anything.”
He said he had no interest in returning regardless.
He was also developing a barbecue restaurant in Tulum called Big Hoss’s Smokin’ Joint. He had befriended the local mayor and police, who would check on him.
He described his life in Mexico as slower, quieter, and more honest than what he had left behind.
The Accident
On January 23, 2026, Corey Harrison was in a motorcycle accident in Tulum. He was in the area for his father’s wedding to Angie Polushkin in nearby Cancun, a ceremony he was now going to miss.
He sustained 11 fractured ribs, a punctured lung, severe internal bleeding, a concussion, neck and shoulder compression fractures, and a lacerated hand requiring 10 stitches.
He was taken to a hospital in Playa del Carmen. The tourist-zone pricing was unsustainable. He had no health insurance. He checked himself out against medical advice and went home. His condition deteriorated. His oxygen levels dropped dangerously.
Friends arranged for a private physician who administered IV fluids and morphine. Corey resisted heavy opioids. His brother Adam had died of fentanyl and methamphetamine toxicity in January 2024.
He told the people around him: “I’m just going to die out here. I don’t have the money to keep paying these people.”
His friends arranged a 4.5-hour transfer to a hospital in Merida. X-rays there showed one fractured rib had separated completely from his rib cage and was actively impaling his lung.
Surgeons performed three operations, clipped his rib cage together, and drained nearly three liters of blood from his chest cavity. He spent 18 days in Merida. Total medical bills exceeded $130,000.
His friend Aron Chambers launched a GoFundMe. The campaign revealed what the departure from television had actually left Corey with: between $70,000 and $80,000 in his bank account before the accident, all of it gone. At the lowest point he had $400.
Rick Harrison’s public statement was that he had paid the medical bills before the GoFundMe launched and that Corey was a grown man in his forties responsible for his own finances.
Corey’s response, delivered from a hospital phone, was blunt: “If Rick Harrison’s heart grew twice its size and he decided to pay all my hospital bills, holy hell, did I win the lottery? This is my dad, and I can promise you, Rick Harrison never said I don’t have to give him back money he gave me.”
He clarified that Rick had wired emergency funds to a local contact to cover bills on the day of the crash, structured as a debt he was required to repay.
As of mid-2026 Corey remains in Tulum, recovering from injuries that doctors estimated would take at least eight months to heal fully. The Corey Harrison Show podcast is on pause. When asked whether he would consider returning to Pawn Stars to document his recovery, his answer was simple: “Right now? No way.”
Net Worth: What the Paper Says and What the Accident Revealed
Corey Harrison’s net worth is commonly cited at $4 million. That figure reflects primarily the 5 percent equity stake in the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, which is real but illiquid, and cumulative Pawn Stars earnings from 15 seasons of one of the highest-rated shows in cable history.
At the show’s peak he earned an estimated $50,000 per episode. Those earnings ended before the move to Mexico.
The motorcycle accident made the gap between paper net worth and actual financial security impossible to ignore. A man with a $4 million net worth on paper had $400 in his bank account after paying his hospital bills, no health insurance, and a GoFundMe launched by a friend to cover rent.
The 5 percent stake cannot be sold without Rick’s consent. The syndication residuals go to the shop. The podcast income was modest before the accident and is paused now.
It is the most honest financial portrait any Pawn Stars cast member has ever provided: a man who made real money, spent real money, holds a real asset he cannot access, and ended up in a Tulum hospital without insurance discovering that television fame does not build the kind of wealth that covers a catastrophic medical emergency in a foreign country.
He named his son after his grandfather. He left the show on his own terms. He nearly died on a motorcycle in Mexico while his father was getting married a few miles away.
The full story of the shop and the cast is in the Pawn Stars cast hub.
What is Corey Harrison’s net worth?
Corey Harrison’s net worth is estimated at approximately $4 million on paper, primarily from a 5 percent equity stake in the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop and cumulative Pawn Stars earnings. However, the stake is illiquid and cannot be sold without Rick Harrison’s consent, and syndication residuals flow to the shop entity rather than to Corey directly. Following his 2026 motorcycle accident, his liquid assets were depleted to approximately $400 before the GoFundMe launched.
Why did Corey Harrison leave Pawn Stars?
Corey Harrison left Pawn Stars after Season 23 in 2024, moving to Tulum, Mexico, and declining to renew his contract. He explained publicly: “I can’t play another season of 41-year-old me pretending to be 23.” He also said he had nothing to do with the pawn shop anymore and that his father would work until he collapsed, but that approach was not for him.
What happened to Corey Harrison in 2026?
On January 23, 2026, Corey Harrison was in a serious motorcycle accident in Tulum, Mexico, during his father’s wedding weekend. He sustained 11 fractured ribs, a punctured lung, internal bleeding, a concussion, and shoulder compression fractures. He checked himself out of a Playa del Carmen hospital against medical advice due to costs, was transferred to Merida where surgeons performed three life-saving operations, and spent 18 days hospitalized. Medical bills exceeded $130,000. He had no health insurance and his bank account was depleted to approximately $400.
Does Corey Harrison own part of the pawn shop?
Yes. Corey Harrison holds a 5 percent equity partnership in the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, secured during Season 7 of Pawn Stars around 2012 after he threatened to leave unless he received ownership. The stake is real but illiquid: he cannot easily sell it without Rick Harrison’s consent, and syndication residuals from the show flow to the corporate entity owned by Rick rather than directly to Corey.
Is Corey Harrison returning to Pawn Stars?
No. Corey Harrison is not returning to Pawn Stars. He permanently departed in 2024 and stated he has no interest in returning. When told in late 2025 that the show was relaunching with Rick Harrison and Chumlee as co-stars, he responded: “That’s news to me. Nobody’s told me anything.” When asked after his 2026 accident whether he would consider coming back to document his recovery, he said: “Right now? No way.”
